Culture

Dear Viewers and Listeners: Happy New Year! This month the SC Legislature goes back into session, and we continue our mission of transparency with the annual broadcast of State House Today, airing on ETV World and streamed on our web site. Airing Tuesday-Thursday, the programs bring viewers live, real time feeds of House and Senate sessions, beginning Jan. 14. On SC Public Radio, State House Week winds up the week’s happenings with a Friday broadcast; and the podcast SC Lede , accessed on our website and through the ETV app, offers an in-depth discussion of the week’s biggest topics. Music...

Credit SC Public Radio "H" is for H.L. Hunley . On the night of February 17, 1864, the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley attacked and sank the USS Housatonic about four miles off Sullivan’s Island. This was the first successful sinking of an enemy ship by submersible in the history of the world. Constructed in Mobile, Alabama, and named for one of its owners, the iron vessel was forty feet long, five feet tall, and four feet wide. It was transported to Charleston with the hopes that it would help break the Union naval blockade of the port. The attack on the Union warship was successful, but...

Following World War I, South Carolina’s economy collapsed. The post-World-War-I drop in demand for textiles, the subsequent collapse in cotton prices, the exhaustion of farmland through poor farming practices, and the decimation of cotton crops by the boll weevil hit South Carolinians hard. Then came the stock market crash on Black Thursday in 1929 and the nation’s plunge into the Great Depression. People were starving, businesses were failing, farms were being repossessed, and sharecroppers were squeezed between the need to grow their own food and their landlords’ demands. Dr. Melissa Walker...

Credit SC Public Radio "F" is for Fairfield County (687 square miles; 2010 population 23,838). Fairfield County, lying in the lower Piedmont, is a geologically diverse region with topography ranging from level plains to hilly terrain. The county lies primarily between the Broad and Wateree Rivers north of Richland County. Originally part of the 1769 court district of Camden, the area became Fairfield District in 1800 and then Fairfield County in 1868. Mississippian mound builders were active in the region from 1300 to 1400 C.E. The first European settlers arrived in the 1740s. Following the...

Credit SC Public Radio "E" is for Earle, Joseph Haynsworth (1847 - 1897). U.S. senator. A native of Greenville, Earle was orphaned at five and was reared by an aunt in Sumter. In 1864 he enlisted in the Confederate army. After the war he attended Furman and was admitted to the bar. He opened a practice in Sumter in the mid-1870s. In 1878 he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives and in 1882 to the state senate. He was South Carolina Attorney General from 1886-1890. Although a staunch member of the Democratic Party’s Conservative faction, he was elected a circuit judge in...

Credit S.C. State Since its founding in 1896, South Carolina State University has provided vocational, undergraduate, and graduate education for generations of African Americans. Now the state’s flagship historically black university, it achieved this recognition after decades of struggling against poverty, inadequate infrastructure and funding, and social and cultural isolation. In South Carolina State University: A Black Land-Grant College in Jim Crow America , William C. Hine examines South Carolina State’s complicated start, its slow and long-overdue transition to a degree-granting...

Update as of 10:30 AM Monday: Heavy rain has overspread much of the Palmetto State and it’s expected to last into early Tuesday morning resulting in a significant risk for flash flooding. The National Weather Service has continued Flash Flood Watches for the Midlands, Pee Dee, Grand Strand, and Lowcountry. Radar data and rain gauges throughout the state have recorded between 1 and 3 inches of rain since the storm began earlier Sunday. Parts of the Midlands and Lowcountry have received upwards of 4 inches. An additional 3 to 5 inches of rain along and east of Interstate 95 are expected before...

Swaths of heavy rain are expected to spread across the Palmetto State over the weekend. The rain will be heavy enough to cause river and street flooding, but there are still questions as to which parts of the state will see the greatest amounts. An area of low pressure is forecast to form in the central Gulf of Mexico and gradually strengthen as it moves northeastward over the Southeastern United States. The first area to receive widespread heavy rain is likely to be the Lowcountry Saturday night into Sunday morning, spreading over the remainder of the state Sunday afternoon through Sunday...

Late nights are a frustrating fact of life for many musicians. Too often, the time after sundown is all that remains for performing, practicing, working against an upcoming deadline, or agonizing over an artistic quandary. But for composer Thomas Palmer, a senior studying composition and clarinet performance at the Unviersity of South Carolina School of Music, there’s inspiration to be found even in the drudgery of a sleep-deprived state. His reed quintet Red-Eye (2019), recently published by Murphy Music Press, is a musical representation of staying up late. “It’s not about a late-night...

During the holiday season, the iconic red kettle is synonymous with the Salvation Army. Did you know that it’s been around since the late 1800s? Captain Joseph McFee started the tradition in 1891 to help to provide a free Christmas dinner for those in need. Today these donations do much more, from providing food and shelter to struggling families throughout the year, to helping provide a Christmas dinner for “Angels” and their families. The Angel Tree program helps put new clothes and toys under the tree for one million children nationwide who usually have to go without Christmas gifts. The...